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Andrei Osipovich Nikulin, The Blue Altai (Altaian Glaciers)

The Blue Altai is one of Nikulin’s best works and one of those that established the direction his painting would take. In this work, the artist used his spatula with dexterity and virtuosity, creating on the canvas a subtle and magical interplay of purple, bright violet, emerald and azure hues. The transparency and finesse of the painting renders not only the materiality of a world that is reified in the foreground (the blocks of stone and ice, the transparent running water, the bright emerald green) but also the lightness and insubstantiality of the background. Here, blue reigns supreme: the sky deploys its colour through the striking white of the clouds, the rocky outcrops, barely covered in fresh greenery, dissolving into the distant blue, with the dark blue river crossing the mountain valley in an intrepid torrent. The Blue Altai is a profoundly poetic landscape, impressionistic in execution and theatrical in spirit.
Canadian Heritage Information Network
State Art Museum of Altayskiy Region